I’m frankly surprised, I’d watched the US equivalent of this bill bounce around and seemingly get turned back at every turn, hopefully (I thought) holding it at bay for the UK.

Seemingly not…

The US government and their interested stakeholders were canny in their early consultations, originally getting the “Free The Internet” radicals and reformers on board to help give their proposed legislation some sort of positive ideological legitimacy.

However, from the early 2000’s (nearly a decade ago), staunch opponents and skeptical legislation watchers such as respected illustrator Brad Holland saw potential disaster for image making creatives (and the rest that also produce salable creative “works” of a none visual nature).

Our government has now seemingly pushed this through rapidly without much fuss.

We (creatives) weren’t consulted, businesses who want to exploit us were… that should tell you enough about our ability to counter the legislation with government…

…and perhaps it will amount to nothing, maybe our government has the foresight and the long-term view that this will benefit everyone involved… they have a history of that kind of decision making don’t they?

Oh wait…

And looking again at the first sentence in this post… (The Good News), It might be that the government are simply waiting for the point when we creatives have to formally register (and pay) to protect our designs, and then when we don’t or we use something they’ve registered that we haven’t owned up to they can put us away… who knows?

This new legislation seems conflicting or over complicated (especially for the individual creative protecting their interests).

Copyright law already works (unless you are a business that wants to use images for free).

…

Just keep an eye on it, I imagine things will unfold and expand if we don’t.

And discuss it with other creatives, and those of your that teach, with your students… Just be aware.